Time to Tell
by Cemily
Summary: Three years after the fall of Voldemort, one woman reflects.


I cannot believe I put up with so much sh. crap (can't you just hear my mother now? "Watch your language Penny!), especially not for so long. It's amazing what a woman in love will do. And I did love him; I loved him with all of my heart, and all of my soul.  
  
We met in the library. We were both looking up practice O.W.L.'s. I can hear his voice right now, so clearly, as if it were yesterday. "Are you really sure you need that book miss? I mean, you're only in fourth year, my O.W.L.'s are in less than three months!"  
  
I convinced him that I was just getting ready, making sure that I had mastered all of my material, so that the next year I could concentrate on the higher-level work, rather than reviewing earlier material. It seems he had done the same. We agreed to share the books we had both gathered while we were in the library and then meet the next evening to exchange the books we took out. That way we would both get to see all the material.  
  
We did meet the next evening, but we didn't just exchange books. We agreed to meet once a week in a deserted classroom to study together. That way we could quiz each other. It was only supposed to be for two hours every Thursday, but our study sessions became longer and longer. I was always impressed by his memory. I swear it was photographic. Oh, and he was so patient, answering all of my questions about being a prefect, and fifth year, and his family. I am muggleborn you see, and I knew nothing of the wizarding world before I received my letter. Percy came from a long line of wizards, only one accountant in the whole lot of them and that's saying something as the Weasley's it seems like to reproduce like rabbits. He loved hearing me talk about my family and my home too. He understood how much I missed my siblings. You see, even though he puts on all these airs, acting as though all he cared about was school, and the ministry, he really is a softy. In fact he such a softhearted fool that he feels he has to countermand his sensitive-nature by acting as though he doesn't have one at all. He's one of the middle children of his family you see - the only to have been at Hogwarts with every single one of the others. I don't think you could be in that kind of situation, with that warm and caring a family, and not be really quite attached. He idolizes Bill especially. He has ever since he was two, or so he told me. Always amazed by how Bill managed to balance ambition, intelligence, and "coolness" he was. Oh my, I'm rambling.  
  
Well needless to say it wasn't long before we started to feel more than simply platonic feelings about each other. It took us forever to admit though. Three months actually. It was right after his O.W.L.s that he told me he cared. He came up to me in Hogsmeade the weekend after the last one all but screaming, "Penny! Penny! I can't believe I found you! I've been looking all over for you! I just got my marks back! Top marks too! Oh, I could never have done it without all your help." And then, to my surprise, he kissed me. I kissed him back.  
  
We wrote all summer, and met in classrooms, corridors, and even the occasional broom cupboard all the following year. We did not want anyone to know. Rather, he did not want anyone to know. Part of that whole "I'm not a softy, I'm an ambitious workaholic" thing he had going on. I understood though. As long as I got to be with him, and I did, about three times a week, at least. We still studied together too. Then I was petrified. Then I awoke. (I don't exactly remember any of the in between, but apparently he was beside himself. Madame Pomfrey even once caught him sneaking into the hospital wing to see me. As far as I know he was professing undying love for me and moved, she promised not to tell anyone so long as he never did it again.) About a week after I woke up we finally managed to sneak off together alone. We went out for a nighttime stroll around the lake and he promised me he'd never leave me. We sat beside the lake, underneath the stars and he cried on my shoulder telling me how much he missed me. I believed him. Frankly I still do.  
  
Ah, young love.  
  
The following year he was made Head Boy, and our relationship was no longer restricted to secluded classrooms. It was nice, being open about it. I think it was a bit of a relief to him too. He was never openly affectionate with me, in public that is, and was never mushy or sappy, once again in public that is. It would have completely gone against his whole image, but people knew that he wasn't such an emotionless academic, as he had always seemed. He even relaxed his image a bit when I wasn't around too. Well except for right before the N.E.W.T.s, but who could blame him?  
  
Right before the end of term he came up to me in Hogsmeade. He had brought a gift, wrapped beautifully. We went walking, to just beyond the edge of the village, where we could be relatively alone. He gave me a beautiful necklace, with a small W engraved on it, an heirloom his grandmother had given him. She had told him that he would know who to give it too, because he wouldn't doubt giving it to them. He told me that I was a part of him, and always would be, and that now I'd have a bit of him to keep with me while I was at school and he was working. He also gave me a book, a kind of journal. He had one for himself too. They were magically bound. If you wrote a passage in one, it would appear in the other, that way we could share our lives, although it took longer to appear the further away you were. We used it at least once a day.  
  
I spent two weeks with his family that summer, a fabulous two weeks that I'll never forget. I did not care that his house was small, and slightly run down. It was his home and that made it perfect in my eyes. At the end of the two weeks we spent an evening together in garden, he had made me a picnic. The man may be brilliant, but he couldn't cook to save his life. At the end he told me his good news. He had been offered a position in the ministry, in the all-important Department of International Magical Co-operation. He was over the moon, and so was I. He told me that he may not be able to write as often as he'd like, but he still would as often as possible. We then went walking in the woods, to a nearby stream that was simply beautiful. As we lay in the grass we talked all about our lives and made plans to spend them together, and we made love, for the first time in our two years together.  
  
The following year his journal entries did decrease and I only heard from him every few days, I did not mind much. I treasured those letters like nothing else. I anticipated them. Yes, they were full of the goings on of the ministry and rather boring reports, but every single one had at least one paragraph of the kind of amorous writing that made me blush every time I read it.  
  
Then one day he announced that he was coming to Hogwarts for the Yule Ball. I was so looking forward to it, even though I didn't get to see him during supper (he as at the head table and I was not). Now Percy doesn't dance, usually. I did get him out for one slow dance, and then we went walking together. He was afraid of getting caught (something about a ministry official and a student and impropriety), but we did manage to find a secluded spot to. talk for the rest of the evening. I always managed to grab him for a few hours each time he came to the school.  
  
I graduated at the end of the year, and while he couldn't make it to the ceremony (that innerving inquiry at the office), he came over to my parents' house for one week of his yearly holidays.  
  
He proposed. To be exact he proposed we elope. He didn't want a big fussy sentimental wedding, just something small that got the job done. I laughed at his wording, but understood his point. Who cared about all the fuss as long as the end of the day we were married. I took a slightly more sensible approach to the whole thing, and it took less than three weeks to plan a nice small wedding that our families could attend. (Mrs. Weasley would have had my head if she hadn't been there.)  
  
It took place one Saturday afternoon, in my parents' garden, and all twenty attendees were treated to good old-fashioned Weasley home cooking. Our honeymoon consisted of not seeing much of Paris for two nights. (It was a long weekend, and he didn't have to be back at the office until Tuesday.) I got a job at McMillan & Cousins, a wizarding book publisher, as an administrative assistant, and we moved into a small apartment in Godric's Hollow.  
  
I was pregnant less than six months later. Percy, who had relaxed a bit after the whole "where is Barty Crouch?" fiasco was most supportive, until the New Shadow came. He believed Fudge, who did not believe that Voldemort had come back. Yes, I say his name. I have every reason to. His parents tried to reason with him. He wouldn't hear it. Dumbledore tried to reason with him. He still wouldn't hear it. Sirius Black, a convicted mass murderer tried to reason with him. That just scared the reason right out of him. I didn't try to reason with him. It was hopeless.  
  
It wasn't until McMillan, my boss, was murdered that he finally accepted reason. McMillan was working on a top-secret project that no one actually knew what was, when he was murdered. I was in the office, heavily pregnant, when it happened. It was Percy's fault in a way too. I had told him that Mac was working on something in secret; I though it was a book about accused Deatheaters, but wasn't sure. He went and blabbed it at the office and Zabini, a member of the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad told Voldemort. Turns out the bloody git had been feeding him information for several months. Percy came to pick me up for a doctor's appointment and saw the Dark Mark in the sky. Five of my coworkers were dead. I was in labour in a broom closet.  
  
Our daughter, Amanda Rose Weasley, was born twenty-one gruelling hours later. Being muggleborn I simply did not like the idea of magic interfering with childbirth. I was the only one who survived the attack at the office. As McMillan didn't actually have any cousins, we were a very small firm. Someone at the Daily Prophet found out that I survived from one of the Nurses at St. Daubs (the wizarding hospital for non-magical medical inquiries and aid), and made the blunder of advertising it.  
  
It wasn't long before Voldemort was after me, most likely thinking I knew something about Mac's work.  
  
Percy was in wretched shape. He knew full well that his mouth had endangered me. His disbelief had endangered me. Worse still, he had endangered our daughter. He quit the ministry, and we moved in with the Weasley's for about a year. It was cramped, but necessary. Percy joined the rest of his family and Dumbledore, working against Voldemort.  
  
Today is Amanda's fifth birthday, and we are going to visit her father. What is left of him. Dumbledore amassed an army of light to fight Voldemort's army of dark in one last battle, on the very doorstep of Hogwarts. From what I know even the giant squid took out a few of the Dementors that had joined the Dark Lord. The losses were great, but when all looked hopeless Harry Potter had shown up, and once again he had defeated Voldemort, but at great cost. Harry Potter, Dumbledore, Arthur, Remus, and Arabella all lost their lives in that last act of Harry's. The magic that destroyed Voldemort had taken with it all of those within ten meters of where they stood face to face. After the death of Voldemort his supporters went mad, there bond with him broken and their minds nearly destroyed along with it. Almost as many good wizards died or were injured after Voldemort as were before. It was one of the Dementors that got to Percy. It tried to administer its kiss, but its mind, massacred as it was could not finish it. It was Charlie who rescued him and brought him home.  
  
The doctors at St. Mungo's are still hoping for a recovery, two years later. I'm not sure I still believe that he will. He fades in and out of consciousness so often, but his moments of lucidity are growing more frequent and longer, though ever so slowly. Maybe he will. I said before that I loved him. Now, I love the memory of him. Who knows what state he will be in when he wakes up - if he ever wakes up? Who knows if I will be able to fall in love with a different him? Only time I am afraid, and time is all I have without him. 


End file.
